


Shine A Light

by gryffindorwriter



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Guilt, Romance, Slow Burn, Star Wars: The Last Jedi Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-10-04
Packaged: 2019-07-24 14:28:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16176962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gryffindorwriter/pseuds/gryffindorwriter
Summary: After a series of unsettling and heartbreaking events, Poe Dameron finds himself more and more drawn to you, Vice Admiral Holdo's daughter. Even though he knows he shouldn't get close to you, he can't help it. There's just something about you, and there's something in him that tells him he has to. Strangely, you feel the same way.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, everyone! 
> 
> I'm Sam, also known as GryffindorWriter over on Tumblr where I first posted this at the beginning of the year. I figured it could be a good idea to put my multi-part fics up here so it's easier for people to access them and also to share them around a bit more. I've edited this and rewritten little bits and pieces, since I wrote it nine months ago, but nothing major has changed if you're here to re-read it! If not, I hope you enjoy reading it for the first time. I really love Poe Dameron and I hope that you like reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it back in December and January! This particular fic has ten parts + an epilogue and all will be posted up here over the next few days.
> 
> Thank you for reading!

“She has a daughter.”

Poe can’t help but turn to look at Leia, standing in front of Lieutenant Connix. He walks over to them in seconds, eyebrows furrowed in his confusion. Leia turns to look at him, confused as to why the pilot is interrupting their conversation, when he speaks.

“Who has a daughter?” Poe asks, voice tinged with worry.

Leia sighs and looks down at her hands. “Vice Admiral Holdo,” she says. “She has a daughter. A nurse. As far as I’m aware, she’s on this transport and isn’t aware of her mothers death.”

He feels his heart sink straight away. The woman he had hated so fiercely without even really knowing her had a daughter. He was already haunted by the fact that he’d treated Holdo so awfully and hadn’t been able to apologise and now he had to see you? He wasn’t ready. Nor, did he think, would he ever be.

Connix walks away when Poe zones back in and he knows immediately that Leia has sent her to find you. He squeezes his eyes shut and turns around, needing to find something to do so that he wouldn’t be here when you showed up.

 

You’ve known Lieutenant Connix for years so when she comes and gets you to go and talk to Leia you have no problem in following her. Your patients are being taken care of and they’ll be more than okay without you for twenty minutes.

Your eyes scan the room as you walk into it, spotting Leia standing near one of the windows, staring out at the glistening sky, a hint of a smile on her lips. Connix smiles sadly at you, confusing you momentarily, before walking away, leaving you and Leia alone. 

“General?” You start. 

Leia turns to look at you, eyes full of worry as she takes you in. You’re smiling even though it’s clear you’re exhausted from working like crazy all day and all night. She almost can’t bare to tell you the truth but she knows she has to. It wouldn’t be right of her to keep it from you. 

“Ah, Holdo,” she says, clasping her hands in front of her. 

You have no idea what’s coming. Instead, you glance around the room again. “Is my mother here? I haven’t seen her in a while. She got onto this transport, right? Or was it one of the other ones?”

The look in Leia’s eyes tells you everything and the smile that was on your face only a few seconds before slowly begins to drop. You go cold. Everything seems to fall, your legs go numb and it feels like the world stops. Leia is speaking but you can’t hear any of her words. Your mother is dead. Your mother is dead. Your mother is dead. Tears spring to your eyes. You can’t believe it.

You can’t move. Your feet feel like they’re cemented to the floor. Leia gives you a sad smile, puts her hand on your shoulder, gives it a squeeze, and walks away, leaving you staring out into the depths of space, tears blurring your vision. You haven’t noticed that your hands are shaking. 

 

Poe stands across the room, leaning up against the wall. He can’t take his eyes off of you. Clearly Leia has just broken the news to you. He can tell when she walks away and leaves you standing alone and heartbroken. He lets his gaze drop to the floor and shakes his head. He wishes he could say sorry. He wishes he could say anything. 

He’s never seen you before, though that’s not a surprise to him. He berates himself when his mind brings up the fact that you’re completely and utterly beautiful, perhaps the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen. He supposes that your mother was beautiful, too, on the inside as well, yet he hadn’t given himself the chance to see it. 

He watches as you lean up against the wall and slide down it. Your head falls into your hands and Poe winces as he sees your body start to wrack with sobs. He finds it difficult to tear his eyes away from you but he has to. Sighing, he leaves the room, needing to get as far away from you as possible before he does something he regrets.

 

When he makes his way back into that room a few hours later, he’s surprised to see you sitting on the floor in the exact same place as before. Your cheeks are tearstained and your hands are still shaking a little. You’ve sat up and are now staring across the transport, eyes trained on nothing across the room.

Slowly, he makes his way up to you, unsure where his courage is coming from as he kneels down beside you and hesitantly taps your knee, forcing you to tear your gaze away from the other side of the room and onto him.

You don’t recognise him. There are plenty of people in The Resistance and he’s just one of the many that you’ve never come across. You suppose that he’s worried about you, seeing as you’ve got red, teary eyes and wet cheeks, or perhaps one of your patients needs you. 

“Sorry,” you mutter, moving to push yourself up from the ground.

Poe shakes his head and stands up with you. “No, no, you’re good,” he assures you.

You frown and cross your arms, glancing around the room for the first time in hours. You were stuck in your own bubble for a while and it was probably good that he’d come and woken you from your trance. You had places to be, after all. People to see. 

“I, uh,” you pause to collect yourself. “I’d best be off.”

Poe can’t stop himself from blurting out the words he’d been dreading saying ever since he found out you existed earlier in the day. “I’m sorry. About your mother.”

You pause again, tear springing to your eyes as you briefly squeeze them shut. “Thank you,” you reply. It seems odd, you think, to thank someone for apologising about your mothers death. It doesn’t seem strong enough to convey what you mean. “Uh, you are…?”

“Oh, Poe. Poe Dameron,” he smiles weakly.

You recognise the name, remembering instantly that your mother told you about him a few days ago – he was a pilot, one who wasn’t a very big fan of your mother taking over. It hurts, thinking of her when she was alive so, instead, you nod slowly and give him a small, weak smile that doesn’t quite reach your eyes. 

“Um, it’s nice to meet you, Poe Dameron. I’m needed in the medbay,” you say, even though you’re sure they can survive without you for a little longer. 

Poe watches you as you go, knowing that this isn’t the last he’ll see of you. Suddenly, something inside him tells him that he needs to make sure you know. He needs to make sure that you know he’s sorry for the way he treated your mother and he’ll do anything to make sure of it.


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a series of unsettling and heartbreaking events, Poe Dameron finds himself more and more drawn to you, Vice Admiral Holdo's daughter. Even though he knows he shouldn't get close to you, he can't help it. There's just something about you, and there's something in him that tells him he has to. Strangely, you feel the same way.

The next time Poe Dameron sees you, you’re talking to Leia. He’s too far away to hear any of what you’re saying and he wasn’t gifted with the art of lip-reading so, instead, he looks at your face. You’re stern looking, talking animatedly and, from the look of it, the conversation you’re having is a serious one. You don’t see him.

The next time you see Poe Dameron, he’s staring out the window at Crait, the planet you’re headed towards. You find yourself intrigued by the pilot, the one who you don’t really know but who was kind to you anyway. He doesn’t see you.

The next time you see each other, Poe comes grumbling into the makeshift medbay onboard the transport. It’s only a few hours after you saw him at the window but he’s rubbing his forehead and something is clearly wrong. You frown and lead him to a bed. 

Poe wishes that Leia had never sent him to the medbay. He’d told her it was nothing, and it was. It was just a simple headache, probably the aftereffects of being stunned by Leia back on Raddus. She, of course, wasn’t having any of it and sent him away with instructions not to return until he was feeling completely better. 

You manage a small smile as you see him. You barely even know the man but he seems kind enough. Even though the fact that your mother is dead was still raw and tearing you apart from the inside out, you had to push forward. It was what you’d mentioned to Leia earlier in the day – you were your mothers daughter and if that meant fighting as hard as possible to make sure her memory was truly honoured, you’d do it without question. 

“Are you injured?” You ask, gathering up some supplies. The stock was limited on the transport and you could only hope that there would be more on Crait, though your hopes were low. It was, after all, abandoned.

Poe shrugs. “Leia thinks I am,” he mutters. “It’s just a headache.”

You chuckle. “That’s an easy fix,” you reply, moving to grab some painkillers and water.

He likes seeing you again, he realises, as he watches you gather the painkillers for him. He still can’t get the fact that you’re Vice Admiral Holdo’s daughter out of his head, though. The fact that the woman gave her life to save everyone elses is something that Poe knows he’ll never forget. And he knows he’s projecting all of those fears and worries about what he never got to say to her onto you, but he can’t help himself. You’re here and she isn’t. 

It’s only a day since you and Poe first met though, as you give him the painkillers, you can see in his eyes that he knows something you don’t. Frowning, you stop him as he thanks you and moves to leave the medbay. 

Poe looks at you, confused as to why you’re asking him to stay for a moment. Unless there was something else he needed he wanted to get back to Leia as soon as possible. And looking at you for so long was bringing back memories of the awful things he’d said to your mother. You sigh and knot your hands together. 

“How did it happen? Did you… did you see it?” You ask, voice quiet. 

He realises what you’re talking about in an instant and internally winces. 

“You knew my mother, didn’t you? She mentioned you. Did you see it happen?” It hurts you to ask him these questions but you know that if you don’t ask someone now, it’s just going to keep bothering you until you combust. You suppose that Leia told you yesterday but, due to the shock of the situation, you’d missed it. 

 

Poe takes a deep breath and lets his gaze fall to the floor. “Yeah, I knew her,” he starts. “I thought she would have said something to you before it happened… before you left.”

You regretfully shake your head. “I was busy with the patients. I thought she would be on the transport. I… I guess I was wrong,” you squeeze your eyes shut. “How did it happen? What did she do? Was it The First Order?”

He sighs, figuring that he’ll just tell you and then get the hell out of here. He’d only come in for a headache and now he was close to combusting with how awful he felt. He knew that he wasn’t responsible for your mothers death but the fact that he hadn’t been able to tell her that he admired her for what she did or to apologise was still playing on his mind. He guessed it always would be.

“She stayed on the Raddus. Leia told me that she decided to stay back and pilot it. When the First Order started firing on our transports she went into lightspeed, right through their ship.”

You don’t know why you’re smiling but you suppose it’s just because of the memory of her. You miss her, more than anything. But you’re proud of her. Proud of the fact that your mother was so brave. The fact that she was so ready to give her own life to save everyone elses. You know, in that moment, that you would do the same if necessary. 

You meet Poe’s gaze, a smile on your lips. “Thank you for telling me.”

He shrugs. “It’s no problem,” he pauses. “I hope you’re doing okay.”

“I will be.”

 

You’re not looking for Poe when you see him again. You were, in fact, looking for Leia and when you see her across the transport, Poe appears right in front of you. You smile at him. “Do you know how long it is until we reach Crait?”

He glances over at the window and shrugs. “Shouldn’t be too long. Is something wrong?”

You shake your head. “No, nothing’s wrong. Just curious,” you admit. You move to sit down on one of the seats by the window, staring out into space. Poe sits down beside you, not realising that he probably should have walked away until he’s sat down and it’s too late. 

The two of you sit in silence for a few moments and, even though you don’t really know the man, you start to find solace in his company. It feels odd, you think, to feel so comfortable around someone you barely know. You suppose it’s because of your mother. Now that she isn’t here, you’re clinging onto one of the last people who was close to her and even though she’d told you that Poe was a headstrong troublemaker and that she liked him, it was clear that he didn’t like her in return. 

Even though you don’t know Poe that well, you can’t help but like him as your mother had. If she’d liked him, then it was clear that she knew you would, too, if you met him. And here you were, sitting down next to him. You smile a little at the thought. 

You wish that you’d spent more time with your mother on Raddus but you were too busy in the medbay, thinking you’d have more time with her. In doing so, you hadn’t witness the tension between Poe and your mother – something Poe was grateful for as he sat beside you, his hands locked together and his eyes trained on Crait as you advanced on it.

He supposes that you need the company, that you need someone to just sit with. He isn’t sure if you have friends on the transport or on any of the remaining ones. The only time he’s seen you was when you were working or crying. When he saw you smile earlier in the day, part of his remorse disappeared, just a little. He finds himself looking at you out of the corner of his eye and shakes his head at the thought that you’re still beautiful. Unintentionally, his hand reaches up to grasp the ring around his neck – his mothers wedding ring.

As the transport lands on Crait you turn to look at Poe, a hint of a smile on your lips. “Thank you for keeping me company,” you say before heading back to the medbay, leaving Poe with a smile on his face.


End file.
